All posts tagged Senkaku Islands

After years of tensions over disputed territory, disputed history and visits to a certain shrine, China and Japan drew closer to establishing a more functional diplomatic relationship with a handshake on Monday between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing.

As video footage suggests, the encounter was a tad on the chilly side. Read More »

China and Japan issued a joint statement on Friday that laid out their intentions to resume talks after a long diplomatic chill. The short statement was carefully crafted to give the two sides plenty of room to offer their own interpretations and avoid giving the impression that they had made compromises. Read More »

Few Americans know both Japan and China as well as Harvard sociologist Ezra F. Vogel. Fluent in both languages, the 84-year-old academic has traveled extensively in and spent the past half century chronicling each country. Read More »

One hundred and twenty years ago today, China and Japan officially declared war after months conflict over control of Korea, resulting in a rout for Chinese forces. China Real Time took this occasion to talk to Ma Yong, a Japan specialist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences about the First Sino-Japanese War and how it changed China’s trajectory. Edited excerpts after the jump. Read More »

Competing maritime claims in the East China Sea have strained relations and deepened distrust between China and Japan.

The Senkaku/Diaoyu islands –under Japanese administration but also claimed by China — are at the center of the dispute as these two Asian states take a more assertive stance in defending their respective claims.

This is the subject of James Manicom’s new book “Bridging Troubled Waters.” Mr. Manicom, a research fellow in global security at the Canadian think tank the Centre for International Governance Innovation, argues that despite the serious deterioration in relations, the dispute isn’t necessarily destined to spin out of control. China Real Time recently caught up with him. Read More »

In the latest flare-up between China and Japan, each country alleges jets from the other side flew dangerously close in an encounter over the East China Sea. This time, a Chinese aviator appears to have caught at least part of the incident on tape. China’s Defense Ministry on Thursday released video clips purporting to document the incident. Read More »

China is winning the public-relations battle with Japan over disputed islands, say two senior retired U.S. military officers.

They said China has been succeeding in painting Japan as an aggressor driven by rising militarism, despite Japan’s long postwar record of pacifism.

That is aiding Beijing’s tactic of slowly putting pressure on Japan to change the status quo over contested East China Sea islands known as the Senkakus in Japan and Diaoyu in China, they said. Read More »

A top U.S. diplomat painted an alarming picture of the standoff between China and Japan over a group of islands in the East China Sea that the two countries contest, noting there had been “an unprecedented spike in risky activity” by Chinese maritime agencies.

“We remain concerned about the serious downturn in China-Japan relations,” said Daniel Russel, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in Congressional testimony Wednesday. He urged the two countries to “lower tensions, turn down the rhetoric, and exercise caution and restraint.” Read More »

With the U.S. under growing pressure to help lower tensions in East Asia as its allies become more enmeshed in territorial disputes with China, the top American naval officer in the Pacific offered some hints on how the U.S. may play that role.

In a telephone conference with reporters, Adm. Samuel Locklear argued for a multilateral approach to solving disputes in the East China and South China seas, calling for a dialogue among friendly nations for this purpose. Read More »

Japan’s Coast Guard has rescued a Chinese protester floating in the East China Sea about 20 kilometers south of islands at the center of a dispute between Japan and China after a failed attempt to land on the islands using a balloon.

The protester, a 35-year-old male cook from Hebei province, took off from the southern province of Fujian on Wednesday morning, according to the coast guard.

Officials have decided not to charge the man because it was unclear whether he fell into the sea within or out of Japan’s territory. They handed him to a Chinese Coast Guard vessel operating near the islands. Read More »

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